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TV Producer Mostafa Azizi Released

April 9, 2016
Sanne Wass
3 min read
TV Producer Mostafa Azizi Released
TV Producer Mostafa Azizi Released

TV Producer Mostafa Azizi Released

 

Iranian authorities have pardoned prominent TV producer and writer Mostafa Azizi, who has been held in Evin Prison since February 2015.

Mostafa Azizi, who had 10 months left of his prison sentence, was given amnesty and released on April 9, 2016, according to his son, Arash Azizi.

“Words can't describe my feelings,” Arash Azizi told Journalism Is Not A Crime, IranWire's sister website. “A lot of us have signed dozens of petitions for people in prison and have sincerely wished and fought for their release. But when your own father is in prison, when you see the daily troubles, the pain in the hearts of those affected; you remember the real human cost of putting people in prison for expressing their opinions.”

Azizi, a Canadian resident, was arrested in February 2015 shortly after he had returned to Iran to visit his family. He was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of “collusion against national security,” “insulting the supreme leader” and “spreading propaganda against the system” for exercising his right to freedom of expression, including posting on social media. The appeals court later reduced his prison sentence to two years.

“We are so relieved and hope for the same for all other political prisoners,” Arash says. “My heart is full of thanks to the hundreds around the world who were with us in these tough times and, from Cape Town, South Africa to Trois-Rivières, Quebec, campaigned for his release.”

Azizi is among a number of prisoners reportedly given amnesty by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. On March 29, 2016, news emerged that Khamenei had agreed to pardon or reduce the prison sentences of convicts eligible for amnesty in response to a proposal by Iranian Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani.

Under Iran’s constitution, the supreme leader has the authority to pardon or reduce the sentences of convicts following a recommendation from the head of the judiciary, and within “the framework of Islamic criteria."

Before Azizi’s trial took place, he spent a month in solitary confinement in Section 2A of Evin Prison, which is run by the Revolutionary Guards. While incarcerated there, he was harshly interrogated and given no access to his family or a lawyer. He was then transferred to Evin’s communal Ward 8.

The 53-year-old television producer suffers from a range of health conditions, including asthma, eczema, rheumatism and high blood sugar levels. Ward 8 of Evin Prison is filthy and severely overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and lacks adequate sleeping and sanitation facilities, which caused his health to deteriorate further.

“He is not very good health-wise,” Arash told Journalism Is Not A Crime on March 24. “Prison has taken its toll on him. He suffers from a range of problems, and the conditions of prison – it being over-crowded and not clean – haven’t been kind to him.”

Azizi’s professional career began in 1986 at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). In 1994, he started his own private production company and produced popular television programs, which were broadcast by IRIB.

In 2010, Azizi moved to Canada, but traveled back to Iran in January 2015 to visit his family and consider the possibility of returning home. According to his son, he intends to stay in Iran after prison.

 

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